How to make sense of real user performance metrics

Gilles Dubuc takes a deep dive into how Wikipedia interprets large amounts of real user performance data and the many pitfalls you can fall into when doing so.

Thanks to client-side APIs like Navigation Timing, Wikipedia can collect a lot of information about the real performance experienced by users. However, the organic nature of this data introduces many pitfalls when it comes to interpreting it. Gilles Dubuc takes a look at best practices, real life examples from Wikipedia’s production traffic, and recent research on this subject. Gilles attempts to answer which of these metrics matter the most. And you’ll get a glimpse of exciting new real user monitoring (RUM) metrics being worked on at the W3C Web Performance working group and Wikipedia’s experience testing them with Google Origin Trials.